PCoIP Zero Clients Are Reaching End Of Life, What Organizations Need to Consider Next

For a number of years, PCoIP™ Zero Clients have been an essential component in organizational infrastructure. By delivering centralized management and reducing endpoint complexity, PCoIP enabled users to securely access virtual desktops without relying on traditional computers, helping organizations simplify endpoint management and improve security.

As technology and team requirements evolve, many organizations are now finding themselves at a crossroads. With the PCoIP end of life (EOL) notice being circulated and support for this technology is reducing, organizations are asking: what is next?

Why Organizations Adopted PCoIP Zero Clients

PCoIP Zero Clients quickly became popular because they addressed key challenges that enterprise IT teams were facing. PCoIP provided:

• A highly secure endpoint
• Centralized desktop management
• Reduced support requirements
• Consistent user experience
• Strong performance, suitable for virtual desktop environments

This was a particularly attractive proposition for sectors processing high-levels of personal and protected data, including financial services, defense and government industries.

So, What’s Changed?

While the core principles behind Zero Clients remain valid, the environments they were designed for have significantly changed.

Today’s organizations must support:

• Hybrid and remote working models
• Physical and virtual machines operating in the same ecosystem
• Distributed teams across multiple locations
• Increasing cybersecurity requirements
• Greater operational flexibility

In many cases, organizations are now discovering that their existing infrastructure was designed for a very different era.

What Does PCoIP End of Life Mean for Organizations?

The PCoIP End of Life announcement means that organizations relying on this technology must now evaluate their long-term infrastructure and determine whether to migrate to a successor platform or explore alternative approaches.

Questions to Ask Before Replacing PCoIP Zero Clients

To help organizations evaluate their current and future infrastructure requirements, we’ve put some key questions together for consideration:

• Is access required to physical systems, virtual systems or both?
• How important is support for graphics-intensive applications?
• What are your long-term and lifecycle requirements?
• Will your chosen solution scale as your organization grows?
• Are software licensing costs a factor in long-term organizational planning?
  

Why Are Many Organizations Evaluating IP KVM Solutions as an Alternative?

As organizations reassess their access strategies, IP KVM is increasingly being considered in the conversation.

Unlike many software-based remote access solutions, IP KVM enables administrators and operators to interact directly with platforms even when operating systems are unavailable or unresponsive. This provides secure, real-time access to critical infrastructure across a network and allows organizations to maintain control of systems regardless of location.

Through conversations with organizations evaluating PCoIP alternatives, we commonly see the following priorities emerge:

• Secure access to physical and virtual environments
• Support for high performance workflows
• Centralized management of critical systems
• Greater operational resilience and flexibility
• One-time hardware cost compared to rolling software costs that can rise over time
• Modular design that is capable of responding to growing organizational requirements

As IT environments grow in complexity, these capabilities are becoming a key consideration for organizations evaluating long-term connectivity strategies.

Planning Your Next Steps

The end of the technology lifecycle does not necessarily mean immediate disruption. It does however create an opportunity to review the capability of existing infrastructure and whether it meets organizational requirements.

When evaluating alternatives, organizations should consider:

By taking a strategic approach from the beginning, organizations can avoid costly migration projects, reduce complexity and ensure their infrastructure can adapt to future requirements.

With over 40 years of experience in connectivity, Adder’s IP KVM solutions offer infrastructure that provides teams with low-latency access regardless of their location, provides the ability to integrate new infrastructure into legacy systems and create complete ecosystems.

Find out more about remote desktop enabled by IP KVM or contact our sales team.